[2949] in Humor
FW: Joke of the day
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (A. Gabriel W. Daleson)
Thu Sep 23 17:53:12 1999
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 17:51:00 -0400
To: humor@MIT.EDU
From: "A. Gabriel W. Daleson" <ursa@MIT.EDU>
>From: "Kathleen K. Brown" <kkbrown@wmco.com>
>To: "'ursa@mit.edu'" <ursa@MIT.EDU>
>Subject: FW: Joke of the day
>Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 07:29:05 -0700
>X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2448.0)
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Brian M. Lee
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 1999 6:33 PM
>> To: Robert S. Beale; Andrew J. Jaworsky; Bill Cole; Blaine V. Krenelka;
>> Brian M. Lee; Cherryl A. Wistos; Christopher D. Nordeen; Corey B.
>> Koepplin; 'David Chloupek'; Don Burkhart; Donald R. Wienk; Frank Jellesma;
>> Gary VanCleve; Gerard A. Kordonowy; Henry C. Rosicky; James G. Honyak;
>> 'James H. Hanna'; Jay D. Byler; Jeffery S. Morgan; Jerry C. Libra; Joe
>> Morales; John H. Herrick; Kathleen K. Brown; Ken A. Seelye; Ken R. Barton;
>> Kirsten Deines; Larry C. Thongs; Mark S. Koenen; Michael W.Rother; Mike J.
>> Brown; Miles A. Johnson; Paul J. Haertel; Rick Perry; Stuart Stobie;
>> Timothy S. Knowlton
>> Subject: Joke of the day
>>
>> Subject: TOASTER
>>
>> Day 1: My boss, an engineer from the pre-CAD days, has successfully
>> brought a generation of products from Acme Toaster Corp's engineering
>> labs to market. Bob is a wonder of mechanical ingenuity. All of us in
>> the design department have the utmost respect for him, so I was honored
>> when
>> he appointed me the lead designer on the new Acme 2000 Toaster.
>> Day 6: We met with the president, head of sales, and the marketing
>> vice president today to hammer out the project's requirements and
>> specifications. Here at Acme, our market share is eroding to low-cost
>> imports. We agreed to meet a cost of goods of $9.50 (100,000). I've
>> identified the critical issue in the new design: a replacement for
>> the timing spring we've used since the original 1922 model. Research
>> with the focus groups shows that consumers set high expectations for
>> their breakfast foods. Cafe latte from Starbuck's goes best with a
>> precise level of toastal browning. The Acme 2000 will give our
>> customers the breakfast experience they desire. I estimated a design
>> budget
>> of $21,590 for this project and final delivery in seven weeks.
>> I'll need one assistant designer to help with the drawing packages.
>> This is my first chance to supervise!
>> Day 23: We've found the ideal spring material. Best of all, it's a
>> well-proven technology. Our projected cost of goods is almost $1.50
>> lower than our goal. Our rough prototype, which was completed just 12
>> days after we started, has been servicing the employee cafeteria for a
>> week
>> without a single hiccup. Toastal quality exceeds projections.
>> Day 24: A major aerospace company that had run out of defense contractors
>> to
>> acquire has just snapped up that block of Acme stock sold to the Mackenzie
>> family in the '50s. At a companywide meeting, corporate assured us that
>> this
>> sale was only an investment and that nothing will change.
>> Day 30: I showed the Acme 2000's exquisitely crafted toastal-timing
>> mechanism to Ms. Primrose, the new engineering auditor. The single spring
>> and four interlocking lever arms are things of beauty to me.
>> Day 36: The design is complete. We're starting a prototype run of 500
>> toasters tomorrow. I'm starting to wrap up the engineering effort. My
>> new assistant did a wonderful job.
>> Day 38: Suddenly, a major snag happened. Bob called me into his
>> office. He seemed very uneasy as he informed me that those on high
>> feel that the Acme 2000 is obsolete-something about using springs
>> in the silicon age. I reminded Bob that the consultants had looked at
>> using a microprocessor but figured that an electronic design would
>> exceed our cost target by almost 50% with no real benefit in terms of
>> toastal quality. "With a computer, our customers can load the bread the
>> night before, program a finish time, and get a perfect slice of toast when
>> they awaken," Bob intoned, as if reading from a script.
>> Day 48: Bill Compguy, the new microprocessor whiz, scrapped my idea
>> of using a dedicated 4-bit CPU. "We need some horsepower if we're
>> gonna program this puppy in C," he said, while I stared fascinated at
>> the old crumbs stuck in his wild beard. "Time-to-market, you know.
>> Delivery is due in three months. We'll just pop this cool new
>> 8-bitter I found into it, whip up some code, and ship to the end
>> user."
>>
>> Day 120: The good news is that I'm getting to stretch my mechanical-
>> design abilities. Bill convinced management that the old spring-
>> loaded, press-down lever control is obsolete. I've designed a
>> "motorized insertion port," stealing ideas from a CD-ROM drive. Three
>>
>> cross-coupled, safety-interlock microswitches ensure that the heaters
>> won't come on unless users properly insert the toast. We're seeing some
>> reliability problems due to the temperature extremes, but I'm sure we can
>> work those out.
>> Day 132: New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. We've
>> replaced the 8-bitter with a Harvard-architecture, 16-bit, 3-MIPS CPU.
>> Day 172: New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months.
>> Day 194: The auditors convinced management we really need a graphical
>> user interface with a full-screen LCD. "You're gonna need some horsepower
>> to
>> drive that," Bill warned us. "I recommend a 386 with a half-meg of RAM."
>> He
>> went back to design Revision J of the pc board.
>> Day 268: New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. We've
>> cured most of the electronics' temperature problems with a pair of
>> fans, though management is complaining about the noise. Bob sits in
>> his office all day, door locked, drinking Jack Daniels. Like
>> clockwork, his wife calls every night around midnight, sobbing. I'm
>> worried about him and mentioned my concern to Chuck. "Wife?" he asked.
>> "Wife? Yeah, I think I've got one of those and two or three kids, too.
>> Now,
>> let's just stick another meg of RAM in here, OK?"
>> Day 290: We gave up on the custom GUI and are now installing Windows CE.
>> The
>> auditors applauded Bill's plan to upgrade to a Pentium with 32 Mbytes of
>> RAM. There's still no functioning code, but the toaster is genuinely
>> impressive. Four circuit boards, bundles of cables, and a gigabit of
>> hard-disk space. "This sucker has more computer power than the entire
>> world
>> did 20 years ago," Bill boasted proudly.
>> Day 384: Toastal quality is sub-par. The addition of two more cooling
>> fans keeps the electronics to a reasonable temperature but removes too
>> much
>> heat from the toast. I'm struggling with baffles to vector the air, but
>> the
>> thrust of all these fans spins the toaster around.
>> Day 410: New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. We
>> switched from C++ to Java. "That'll get them pesky memory-allocation
>> bugs, for sure," Bill told his team of 15 programmers. This approach
>> seems like a good idea to me, because Java is platform-independent, and
>> there are rumors circulating that we're porting to a SPARCstation.
>> Day 530: New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. I
>> mastered the temperature problems by removing all of the fans and the
>> heating elements. The Pentium is now thermally bonded to the toast.
>> We found a thermal grease that isn't too poisonous. Our marketing
>> people feel that the slight degradation in taste from the grease will
>> be more than compensated for by the "toasting experience that can only
>> come
>> from a CISC-based, 32-bit multitasking machine running the latest
>> multiplatform software."
>> Day 610: The product shipped. It weighs 72 lb and costs $325. Bill was
>> promoted to CEO.
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